Top officers named for UW police

an announcement being issued this morning by UW's media relations office

The University of Waterloo is welcoming two experienced officers from the Waterloo Regional Police Service to its police service. The additions will help strengthen campus security and bolster an already strong working relationship between UW and regional police.

Daniel Anderson, currently a superintendent of the WRPS, becomes UW's new director of police and parking services on November 1. Staff Sergeant Christopher Goss, a 21-year veteran of the regional police, has just started a unique one-year secondment during which he will serve as manager of police and security operations with the UW police.

“The university is extremely pleased to welcome these two experienced professionals from our local police services,” said UW president David Johnston. “We look forward to working with both, and continuing to nurture our very important working relationship with the Waterloo Regional Police.”

Anderson will direct the delivery of police, security and parking services to the university community, overseeing a department of three dozen people. He will develop police and security programs, and oversee investigations related to criminal offenses, provincial offences and appropriate UW policies. He will also serve as a resource to the UW emergency response group.

Before coming to UW, Anderson served the regional police for 32 years and was commander of WRPS's division 1 in Kitchener. At division 1, he was responsible for 135 employees deployed as patrol officers and detectives.

In 1997, Anderson was a member of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. He served six months in a contingent monitoring local Bosnian police. Duties included investigating human rights complaints levelled at local police.

“I’m very much looking forward to joining the university community and contributing to its overall safety and security,” said Anderson. “The university and local police have enjoyed a long and beneficial relationship, and I look forward to building on this relationship.”

Goss has joined UW as part of a special arrangement — a first of its kind in Canada — to enhance collaboration between the university police and regional police. He will supervise five sergeants and 12 patrol officers, and determine how UW's police and security operations can most effectively work with those of WRPS..

He reports jointly to UW’s director of police and parking services, currently Al MacKenzie, and to Superintendent Dave Mazurek of WRPS’s division 3.

Says Matthew Torigian, chief of the regional police: "The presence on campus of an experienced supervisor with the Waterloo Regional Police Service, working in conjunction, with the UW police service will help identify additional strategies to ensure our shared goal of improving services relating to crime prevention and enforcement."

Goss has served as patrol supervisor in WRPS's division 1, heading a general patrol and an investigative team of 20 officers, three sergeants and two civilian members. He was the first member of the regional police to be assigned as the emergency planning officer. He participated in managing the regional police response to Ontario's power outage and the SARS outbreak in 2003.

Anderson succeeds MacKenzie, who is retiring after just over 21 years as director. He joined UW as director of security in August 1987, following a career in the Military Police and Security Branch of the Canadian Armed Forces.

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Universe ‘does not expand uniformly’

by John Morris

A UW physics and astronomy professor, Mike Hudson, is conducting fundamental research on large-scale "cosmic" flows in the Universe, work that will result in a new understanding of the origin of structure in the Universe.

Hudson, who studies observational and theoretical cosmology, has discovered that our part of the Universe — out to a distance of 400 million light years — is not expanding uniformly in all directions as expected. In other words, the expansion is faster in one half of the sky than in the other.

"It's as if, in addition to the expansion, our 'neighbourhood' in the Universe has an extra kick in a certain direction," he says. "We expected the expansion to become more uniform on increasingly larger scales, but that's not what we found."

Along with colleagues, Hudson has submitted a paper of his research team's analysis to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. A preprint version of the paper, which has been accepted, can be viewed online.

Recently, Hudson was quoted in Science Now Daily News discussing the related findings of a research team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The NASA team, led by astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky, has independently found that 700 distant clusters of galaxies, gas, and dust are all being pulled in the same direction. Hudson was quoted as saying that it's an "intriguing" finding and adds that the direction of the flow agrees "very well" with that of his team's own discoveries.

Hudson notes that if these new results hold up, "then theorists will certainly have to make some major revisions to the standard cosmological model."

Brian McNamara, a University Research Chair in UW's department of physics and astronomy, says Hudson is finding that much of the matter in the nearby universe moves as an ensemble with a surprisingly high speed. "If the work he and others are doing is confirmed, it will require a major revision in the way we think the universe came into being and how it evolved."

Hudson does research on galaxies — the building blocks of the universe — and their formation. He measures the properties of dark matter and dark energy through gravitational lensing, cosmic flows and large-scale structure.

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It's Thanksgiving . . . and Oktoberfest

There may not be as much of a UW presence as usual in Monday’s Oktoberfest parade through Kitchener-Waterloo, an annual event that’s telecast Canada-wide (though not necessarily live) on CTV. The Midnight Sun solar car and other UW student projects have sometimes shown themselves off in the parade, but the dean of engineering office says it’s not aware of plans by any engineering group to participate in this year’s event.

With or without UW involvement, the parade — which includes floats, bands, clowns and local and imported culture — begins at 8:30 Monday in downtown Waterloo and heads south along King Street into central Kitchener. It's a Thanksgiving Day fixture in K-W and across the country, a highlight of the nine-day Oktoberfest, "Canada's Great Bavarian Festival". This year's is the 40th annual Oktoberfest for this community, and starts with ceremonies in downtown Kitchener at noontime today.

Oktoberfest includes a number of special events aimed at families, including Saturday morning's pancake breakfast and barrel race in central Waterloo, and the "Oktoberfest Idol" competition in Kitchener later the same day. It also brought the crowning of UW graduate and Internet entrepreneur Natalie MacNeili as “Miss Oktoberfest” last week. And more: in a ceremony last night, Caryl Russell, the director of the UW Well-Fit program based in kinesiology, was named one of the Oktoberfest Women of the Year. (More on that next week.)

But the heart of the festival is the "festhalls" scattered across the city (and open varying days), with German music, German food and a certain German beverage in abundance. Missing from this year’s list of festhalls is "Seagram Haus", otherwise the gymnasium at University Stadium, which was an Oktoberfest venue until a couple of years ago. Various UW outings to some of the festhalls are planned: “Universities Night” at Bingemans next Thursday, tickets $10 at the Federation of Students office; a UW engineering exclusive section at the Concordia Club, October 17, information from the engineering alumni affairs office; an outing to Kitchener Auditorium, October 17, sponsored by Sigma Chi, details online.

Meanwhile, the campus will be quiet for the next three days as Thanksgiving is observed. Monday, October 13, is a holiday — UW offices and most services will be closed, and classes will not be held. The Physical Activities Complex and Columbia Icefield are closed Monday (the PAC is also closed Saturday and Sunday, the Icefield open 9:00 to 5:30 Saturday and 9:00 to 7:30 Sunday). The Dana Porter and Davis Centre libraries will be open normal hours on Saturday and Sunday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Monday. The bookstore and other retail outlets will be closed both Saturday and Monday. Campus-wide, it's back to normal on Tuesday morning.

As always, the UW police (519-888-4911) will be at work, the Student Life Centre (519–888-4434) will be open, and the central plant will monitor UW's buildings (maintenance emergencies, ext. 33793).

Finally . . . with the beginning of Oktoberfest, there can be more than the usual number of too-merry drivers on the road; let us celebrate with moderation and drive with care. And at Thanksgiving may we be, as the old grace says, truly thankful. The sorrows and burdens come easily enough to mind, but still, we can remind ourselves, we in Canada and in Waterloo have much for which we can give thanks.

CAR

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